Whoever said that time solved all problems, never went from homeschooling a toddler to homeschooling a teenager! While some skills are mastered by the time the homeschool student hits his teens, there are a whole new set of issues that the parent must deal with as he grows older. How do you guide this young human being to live up to his full potential?
Share the Dream
The key to creating a life full of inspiration and passion is to help your teenager take charge of his own learning. The basis of this is to ask your child what his dream for life is. The things he wants to do, the job he feels he would like to work at, the kind of place he wants to live in, the hobbies he will develop. You need to sit down and work out each phase of his dream life with him. Then ask him to make a plan on how he wishes to accomplish all that he wants in life.
Create your own Life Plan
Now that your teenager has a clear idea of what he hopes to achieve in life, give him the freedom to create his own life plan. The study syllabus should be designed by him keeping the end goal in mind. He will now pick lessons that bring him closer to accomplishing his dreams. Let him find out all about what he needs to learn in order to be successful in his chosen field, then help him learn all of it. His academic achievements now have a definite goal in mind.
Building Skills and Confidence Level
No matter how independent your teenager may seem, he is still a child who is learning to take his first steps into creating a life of his choice. He will constantly need your support specially when he is unable to ask for it out of pride. You have to be able to mentor him in a way that he builds skills that will help him. Then when he succeeds with short term goals, it will give him the confidence he needs to meet his long term goals and dreams.
